5 Facebook Settings Your School or Class Page Need to Use

Facebook is a terrific way for your class or program to connect with students, family, faculty and other stakeholders, but it can also be tricky to use effectively.

Features change somewhat frequently that can be difficult to keep on top of and cause confusion on how to run your page. As a result, there may be confusion or misunderstanding regarding the features you could be using. Thankfully, Richard Byrne at FreeTech4Teachers has broken down the top five Facebook features schools should be using.

1. Profanity filter. This one is self-explanatory. You'll want to turn it on.

2. Visitor posts. This setting enables you to decide if you want visitors to be able to write posts on your page's wall. I have this option turned off because I don't want to worry about parents or students posting things that they shouldn't share publicly and or airing a grievance in public. I also don't want to worry about having to manually filter spam from the wall.

3. Messages. I turn off the option for people to send private messages through the Facebook page. I turn it off because I want parents and students to use my school email address for questions. I do that just in case there ever needs to be an archive of a message or series of messages. The school can archive email, your Facebook page cannot.

4. Tagging ability. I set this so that only page administrators can tag the page in posts. It gives me a little more control over where page appears.

5. Expiring posts. Turn on this option to set expiration dates for posts. This is handy because you might be posting information that has a limited shelf life. For example, you probably don't need a reminder about an open house night to continue to appear three weeks after the event.

Dean Asher is a former copywriter with MBS. Though he no longer writes for us, he is still proud of having helped this blog continue to evolve as an industry-leading resource of news and original content.